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Thaumatic Compass Discussion

1 week ago

Greater realm of preservation and righteous aura seem to inefficient and reactive in a deck with so few instants. Thaumatic CompassFlip might be better as a second maze of ith, or Comeuppance for mass protection

1 week ago

Slow down opponents' ability to cast spells, which forces opponents to keep cards in hand

Force opponents to discard, limiting their options

Use discard triggers to punish opponents

This sounds like it can work with Bolas. The risk I'd point out is with the discard punishers, specifically ones like Megrim and Liliana's Caress. They can be a little fragile - once the opponent no longer has any cards, you stop getting triggers. They're nice incidental damage and can add up, but you can't rely on them to actually close out the game. Bolas is also not ideally suited to the stax plan - he doesn't inherently break symmetry, so there are much better options for hard stax.

Your MVP cards in a discard-based strategy are going to be Geth's Grimoire and Waste Not, with Notion Thief as a runner-up. You're playing a control game, and control requires keeping your hand full.

Wheels that discard are going to be excellent for you, getting a ton of discard triggers. Ignore wheels that shuffle and then draw without discarding.

For the stax package - Back to Basics is going to be your best target. Use it with Frozen AEther so that all opponents' lands enter tapped, and Basics can keep them tapped down.

Back to Basics doesn;t stop you from using your own fetches (even budget slow-fetches) since you only use those once - they don;t need to untap. Blood Moon works, and it sets your nonbasics to one of your actual colors, but it also turns all your fetches into Mountains. Watch out for that.

I'd also look at Ruination. It's MLD...but it only blows up non-basic lands. It's exactly what you're doing with the enchantments, but with removal.

You already seem to know the mana rock drill from your Nekusar deck. You want to lean heavily on the mana rocks - all of the 2CMC signets/talismans/Fellwar Stone. Fellwar is going to get much less useful once you land Bloood Moon though. Star Compass is useful since you'll be loading heavily on basic lands. Coldsteel Heart is useful to plug a specific color hole. Obviously Sol Ring. You're going to be looking for color fixing more than anything, so Chromatic Lantern is worth the extra mana, and any Mox you can afford are worthwhile (except Mox Amber, that one's less useful).

Blood Moon and Back to Basics are great, but they likely are not enough to consistently slow opponents enough to be wroth all of this workaround by themselves. Even Ruination doesn't add enough. Unfortunately Grixis doesn;t have any of the neat land-untap triggers like Nature's Will or Seedborn Muse - if it did, you could abuse things like Stasis and Rising Waters and Static Orb more easily. Still, you could support Winter Orb with enough mana rocks. Be sure to run good one-sided artifact removal like Vandalblast to keep opponents from using their own rocks.

And of course Omniscience can let you blow up all the artifacts and lands and still play what you want. You'll be running a ton of rocks anyway, which could ramp you into it fairly early.

The big thing, though, is how you want to win. Stax doesn;t work super well on its own - you need to be using stax to slow your opponents down so that you can pull off your own win condition. Do you have any ideas on how youd like to win, even if just generally? Combat, combos, punisher effects like Megrim, mill, etc?

3 weeks ago

SP3CTR3_chelts, My experience with Connive / Concoct is that it is an absolute bomb in limited, but lacks any kind of star quality in constructed. Connive being 4 CMC is bad when you're stealing at best something like Aurelia. You'll likely be in a spot where you would rather have Vraska's Contempt or Ritual of Soot in a deck that plays Aurelia. Especially if they follow up your Connive with a Conclave Tribunal or a post attackers step Justice Strike. The Concoct side is decent for the surveil 3, but overall The Eldest Reborn is far superior for a reanimation effect. It also deals with pesky Carnage Tyrant, planeswalkers, and allows to you reanimate a Doom Whisperer, Dream Eater, or whatever spicy thing your opponent has in the graveyard for you. TER also plays well with Raider's Wake and the overall discard control plan. Arguel's Blood FastFlip and Thaumatic CompassFlip are brought in against late game match ups where land count matters and your opponent is likely to be attacking with only one creature at a time. These were both experimental choices and are up in the air as to how long they remain in the deck. Arguel's is a lot better in higher creature count decks, but does nullify your opponents removal spells so it's up to you if you want to try it. Compass is okay, I wasn't super impressed by it. However, it does shut down Crackling Drake very well. I am still working out the kinks and trying new techs. One thing I have been wanting to try is a creature heavy surveil list with white in it for Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants, but that will be once the next set drops and we have access to all U/W and B/W shocks. Once you have your list posted, link it to me here so I can take a look and we can continue brainstorming! I appreciate your questions and suggestions! Keep them coming!

3 weeks ago

Very impressive first deck, you have lots of powerful toys here. But I think I may be of some assistance in helping you make it even stronger.

Since your deck is only at $189.9 I'm going to make the assumption you have a bit of a budget so I'll try and keep my suggestions fairly cheap.

Right away I notice you have most of the pieces for game ending combo's already in your deck. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion and similarly Phyrexian Devourer + Triskelion + Necrotic Ooze + Buried Alive make game ending combo's that are super reliable. With the Mikaeus + Triskelion combo, all you need to do is let the triskelion shoot a opponent twice while Mikaeus is on the field then kill itself with its last counter. The Triskelion will then come back onto the field due to Mikaeus, repeat this process an infinite amount of times and the game is all yours. Similarly, if you cast Buried Alive to put Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer into the graveyard while a Necrotic Ooze is on the field you can use the phyrexian devourer ability to mill your entire deck while the Triskelion ability pings all your opponents to death.

And if you do decide to run that combo, I'd also recommend running Walking Ballista for added redundancy.

In more general deck building terms I think there are also a few upgrades you could easily do.

Mana Ramp is super important in EDH. Games are often won and lost based off of who ramped hardest. So with that in Mind I HIGHLY recommend adding more mana rocks to your deck. As a rule of thumb I'd like to say that 10ish mana rocks are best for your average deck. So since you have five I'd say aim for at least four more. Some decent ones you may want to consider would be:

I also think that some of your choices for zombies could be a little stronger for EDH

What I would cut and why:

Wight of Precinct Six This card seems like it would be good in EDH with there being six different graveyards, But unless you were to run a heavier mill package this card only ends up being a slightly larger than average beater that doesnt even have trample

Gempalm Polluter This is a very good card in 1v1 games, but if you are playing three other players then just targeting a single player isn't worth much

Vindictive Lich This is honestly a fine card, I just think that since you aren't abusing his death triggers that this spot might be better spent on a different zombie

And I personally like running at least two or three counterspells when I play in blue. Counterspell and Swan Song are probably the best if you're not looking to spend tons of money but there are tons to choose from.

And finally I think I would be doing you a great disservice if I didn't suggest you consider Cyclonic Rift.This card is absolutely bonkers in EDH and probably the single best blue spell in the game for EDH.

Sorry if it seems like I'm insulting your deck building capabilities. You really do have a pretty good core to work with here but as with any deck there were a few places I felt could be improved upon. But when it comes right down to it these are just my opinions and there are no hard rules for what makes a deck good or fun.

1 month ago

Pretty sweet list. Always happy to see another superfriend ;D

For the mana base, I'd first get rid of your monocolor taplands. The scry 1 on New Benalia doesn't make it better then just running a plains imho, and in a deck with only 6 creatures Mortuary Mire and Sejiri Steppe just end up without targets too often.
Blighted Woodland comes in untapped and can find you whatever you need. Krosan Verge enters tapped, but activating it is cheaper and it finds nonbasics. Things like Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are often better than tapped duals, because they find you whatever color you need (once you add some basic forests) and thin your deck. Ash Barrens as well as Bant Panorama and Esper Panorama do the same, but they can also serve as untapped lands once you have all your colors. The Vivid lands (Vivid Grove, Vivid Meadow, etc.) enter tapped, but they fix for any color and synergise with proliferate. All of those are very cheap.

Next you might want to look for the cycle duals from Amonketh (Fetid Pools, Irrigated Farmland, etc.). The cycle ability is way more relevant than gaining one life imho, and they have their land types which means things like Krosan Verge or Liliana of the Dark Realms can find them. The fact they still enter tapped makes them pretty cheap moneywise. Also keep your eyes open for the Battlebond lands (e.g.Sea of Clouds), and the shockduals from Ravnica (Overgrown Tomb etc.). Those are a bit more pricey, but the fact that they are recent (and, for the BB ones, only playable in multiplayer) means that there are quite a few of them sitting in tradebinders, and they are relatively affordable. This only goes for the shocks that have already been reprinted, for the Azorious and Orzhov ones we'll still have to wait a bit.
I upgraded the landbase of my Atraxa list pretty much the same way and it worked quite fine throughout.

Something else I'd definitely add to your list that helps with fixing your mana as well is some ramp. Your deck has an avg cmc of 4+, and you want to get to the point where you can cast a walker and a boardwipe / something to protect it with on the same turn asap. The fact that you have green in your color identity gives you access to some of the best ramp/fixing available. Farseek and Nature's Lore can find nonbasics if you have them, but are fine without them. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach can fix you in 2 colors. Grow from the Ashes is a bit more manaintensive, but its kicked form brings the lands in untapped and you might find it in draftchaff-boxes at your LGS. Thaumatic CompassFlip costs a bit more, but it finds you basics in a pinch and transforms into a land that taps for mana and can protect your walkers.

Then there's manarocks. The guild signets (e.g. Dimir Signet) both ramp and fix you, without requiring colored mana to cast and are very budget friendly. Astral Cornucopia and Everflowing Chalice are very good with Atraxa, and not expensive either.
I'd try to run ~10 ways to get ahead in mana, maybe even more in a deck as a manaintensive as this one.

Oath of Gideon: Blockers, and a very sneaky buff to your walkers that people are reluctant to use removal on but generates a lot of value over time.

Oath of Teferi: Not as abusable as The Chain Veil but also less expenive both mana- and moneywise, and still very powerfull. The etb effect can bring a walker back to starting loyalty or reuse something like Djeru, With Eyes Open. If nothing else it untaps one of the lands you used to cast it.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, good luck and have fun building and playing!

1 month ago

My budget has indeed been my biggest hurdle so far, also being new to the commander format I am have been working to get a lot of the staples. Cyclonic Rift will definitely be going in soon. I do like the idea of running Thaumatic CompassFlip and Blackblade Reforged but not sure what to take out..

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